When Joshua Steckel left his job as a private school college counselor on New York City's Upper East Side to work at a public high school in Brooklyn, he discovered that for low-income students the competitive game of college admissions has entirely different rules and much higher stakes. The winner of the Ida and Studs Terkel Prize and now available in paperback, Hold Fast to Dreams traces the pathways of ten of Josh's students from their obstacle-ridden application processes through their life-changing college experiences.